Hasta La Ideas

There is a lot of strong photographic work on show at the Royal College of Art’s Battersea site this year, including Lola Bunting’s beautiful series of giclée prints on felt (A Sensitive Layer I, shown above). It really is worth going to see before July 1…

The five sites of the Battersea RCA campus mean there’s a large distance to cover, particularly as graduates from the painting, photography and printmaking courses feature in each building (aside from the Testbed 1 site, which is dedicated to design interactions and product design). What follows are some of the highlights from the photography displays.

Bunting has three other pieces on show including Idle Vice (left) and Arm in Arm. These are displayed in felt lined frames. lolabunting.com.

Here are two images from Eugenia Ivanissevich’s On the Island series. eugeniaivanissevich.com. 

And two photographs from James Smith’s ongoing Temporal Dislocation series, which features some of England’s more peculiar architectural oddities (below these is a shot of how his images are displayed within the Sculpture building). j-smith.co.uk.

Jolanta Dolewska’s beautiful series, Court, is presented over one wall in the Testbed 2 site. Please visit her website for a better idea of the subtle tones in this series; my camera just doesn’t do them justice. jolantadolewska.com.

And Michael Hammond’s A Hole in the Light series is displayed on the other wall in the first part of the Testbed 2 site. hammondphotography.co.uk. (These images are taken from Hammond’s website).

Here are two images from Theo Niderost’s series, In the Gaze of the Kutabuk. theoniderost.tumblr.com.

Lizzie Vickery’s photographs in her Voracious Ghost series, on left, have a very strange quality to them. I think they’re of plastic models of foodstuffs, but their enlarged size, against the cavernous black backgrounds, all adds to effect. lizzievickery.com.

Tereza Zelenkova’s astronomical room features several photographs, objects and a large-scale star chart. terezazelenkova.com.

OK, technically Matthew Benington’s Undulating Form Hammered at the Cusp of the Lid falls into the ‘printmaking’ discipline, but as I liked it so much I’ve decided to include it here. It’s made from photocopied paper, gouache, vinyl and screenprint. matthewbenington.com.

Ute Klein’s still lives were great, too. Here are All My Mother’s Bowls and Bouquet. uteklein.com.

And, finally, also holding its own in the Sculpture building is Jinkyun Ahn’s series of images of his parents. (The first image is from his website, the second is taken at the RCA show). jinkyunahn.com.

It is really is worth a trip to the RCA’s Battersea site to see these images (and many others) in the flesh, not to mention the work within the painting and printmaking disciplines.

The RCA Battersea show runs until July 1 across its Dyson, Sculpture and Sackler buildings and its two Testbed sites. All venues are London SW11, but see rca.ac.uk/show2012 and also http://show2012.rca.ac.uk for more detailed information.